Resilient People Have More Energy

Do assertive people have more energy? Do emotionally vulnerable people have less? Do conscientious people with an active and healthy lifestyle have more? Those three questions were asked by researchers at Florida State Medical School, who learned that the answer to all of the above is “yes.” A Florida State news release reports that researchers measured the personality traits (such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness) of 642 people, ages 31 to 96. Lower scores on neuroticism and higher scores on the other four dimensions were deemed to indicate a more resilient personality. Next, researchers measured the energy expenditure of the subjects at rest and at normal and maximal sustained walking speeds. Here’s what they found: Those identified as more neurotic required a longer time to complete the walking task and had lower aerobic capacity, and those who scored lower for neuroticism and higher for conscientiousness, extraversion or openness had better aerobic capacity and required less energy to complete the same distance. Read more from Florida State.